


Happy Endings

by KillianJones32



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam helps Ronan sleep, Insomniac Ronan, M/M, Post-The Raven King, Takes place a few days after everything happens and Cabeswater dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 11:25:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11126088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KillianJones32/pseuds/KillianJones32
Summary: Ronan hasn't slept since Cabeswater died but tonight Adam insists on helping him sleep and in doing so unknowingly helps Ronan come to terms with grieving for his mother and for Cabeswater.





	Happy Endings

“I can see you staring at me.”

Ronan snorts from his side of the couch but his eyes don’t waver from staring at the side of Adam’s head.

“Well while you and Opal were ridiculously excited to watch this movie, I happen to see it for the Disney bullshit that it is and couldn’t be bothered paying attention. I mean even Opal got bored of it halfway through.”

Ronan doesn’t add that he’d much rather look at Adam than any movie or TV programme and that this is what he usually does when they watch something together because he doesn’t think it’s necessary information for Adam to know.

Adam looks down into his lap and is proves right of course by the young dream girl who has been asleep for a good twenty minutes.

Ronan doubts Adam was really paying attention to the movie anyway as he turned the sound down until it was barely audible when Opal fell asleep but knowing Adam, he probably just wanted a distraction from everything going on.

“I’m glad she’s getting some sleep though” Adam whispers, fingers softly stroking through her stringy hair.

Ronan huffs, “I suppose when she’s sleeping she’s not causing havoc”

But looking down at Opal’s blissful sleeping face, Ronan is glad that she is sleeping peacefully right now. She’s been restless for the past few days, ever since Cabeswater died.

Cabeswater was a part of her just like it was a part of Ronan and Adam but Opal was a creature born to the forest of Cabeswater, in a sense she was Cabeswater, it existed within her and always would.

Whereas Adam willingly tied himself to it and Ronan had created it from his mind and now that Cabeswater was gone, the only part of them Cabeswater had control of was the small place it would always hold in their memories and hearts. It wasn’t as easy for Opal to disconnect herself from it.

“At least she is sleeping though” Adam says, his eyes finally lifting to meet Ronan’s and Ronan can tell from that determined look in his eyes that he won’t like what Adam has to say next and sure enough he’s right, “Unlike you.”

Ronan sighs and rolls his eyes, “I’m sleeping fine Parrish.”

“Bullshit”

Ronan unconsciously smirks a little at hearing Adam swear, it’s something he rarely does and only around those he feels comfortable with. Truth be told Ronan feels Adam swearing more often is due the extensive time they spend together and Ronan’s habits are beginning to pick up on Adam.

And Ronan is rather glad it’s this particular habit Adam is picking up and not street racing or binge-drinking, Gansey would have a heart attack if two of his best friends became reckless wild youths.

“I’m-“ Ronan begins to try and explain

“You don’t lie remember?”

Ronan glares at Adam, a sharp pointed glare for daring to throw his moral code in his face.

How can Ronan be expected to be honest after all this shit?

After watching his mother die in his dreams only to wake up knowing it wasn’t really a dream? After watching the boy he loves be controlled by a demon and try to kill him? After watching his best friend, his brother die to save him? How can he be expected to sleep when every time he closes his eyes he sees those memories on a loop in his mind?

Ronan knows he hasn’t said any of this out loud but his face must betray him or maybe Adam has grown to know him so well that he can see past the cold, unloving face the rest of the world sees because suddenly he feels a small, rough but soft hand take his and a thumb stroke the back of his hand slowly.

“Is it the insomnia again?”

Ronan opens his mouth to speak but finds that he doesn’t truly know the answer so he just shrugs.

That first night, he’d been so exhausted all he’d wanted to do was fall asleep but he couldn’t, he just couldn’t shut his thoughts off and he would have tossed and turned if it weren’t for Adam’s body pressed against him, sleeping soundly so Ronan was forced to lie there for hours, reliving the events over and over until he felt like he couldn’t breathe. But then he’d open his eyes and see the rise and fall of Adam’s chest and somehow the room stopped closing in on him and he felt like he could breathe again but sleep still refused to come.

It was the same on the second night but for the last two, Ronan admits that he’s exhausted enough to probably sleep for days let alone an hour or two but he’s admittedly reluctant to.

It’s ironic, less than a year ago Ronan would fall asleep several times a day just to recover numerous things from his dreams and now he was too scared to fall asleep once in a week, it was pathetic and he despises that.

“Well let me guess alright?” Adam asks but he continues before Ronan can answer, “You don’t want to fall asleep because you’re cautious of what’ll be there in replace of Cabeswater.”

Ronan wants to scoff, he wants to roll his eyes, jump off the couch and tell Adam he can shove his guesses where the sun doesn’t fucking shine and stop trying to psycho-analyse his own friend/maybe-boyfriend (if they ever get around to having that conversation).

But Ronan doesn’t do any of that because unfortunately Adam Parrish is right, even if it wasn’t something Ronan had been prepared to admit to himself until the words were spoken aloud.

Ronan doesn’t even feel himself nodding until Adam squeezes his hand gently.

“Let’s go to bed”

It’s second nature to Ronan to want to cock an eyebrow, smirk with his teeth and make some luring comment but it’s a testament to his exhaustion that he’s not able to do any of those and instead he merely nods, and goes to lift Opal off the couch before he’s stopped by Adam.

“I’ll take her to her room; you just go up and get ready for bed okay? I’ll be there in a bit.”

Ronan’s not one to follow commands from anyone except maybe Gansey but his body is too tired to fight and seemingly acts of its own accord and Ronan soon finds himself in his room, pulling on a t-shirt and shoving off his sweatpants and socks.

Walking into the hall to go to the bathroom, he hears a suddenly awake Opal quietly begging Adam for a story from her bed in Declan’s old room.

He smiles as he hears Adam say no she’s to go to bed at least three times when he knows Adam will give in soon enough because he can never say no to Opal. Ronan almost laughs at the irony of Adam being unable to say no to Opal who’s basically a smaller more feminine version of Ronan but Adam can happily say no to him without a second thought.

But then again Ronan wouldn’t have it any other way.

Sure enough after he goes to the toilet and brushes his teeth and walks back to his room, he can hear Adam whispering tales of some fairy-tale princess that did something amazing before marrying some pretty boy with fancy hair in a castle and living happily ever after.

If only things were that easy in the real world because while Adam may be a pretty boy with fancy hair, Ronan was certainly not some fairy-tale princess, if anything he was the dragon that everyone despised that was killed by the hero at the end.

And then there were his parents. His mother was of course the beautiful princess and his father the noble prince who saved her from his own nightmares.

Ronan squeezes his eyes shut tightly and falls back onto his bed, trying not to think about how if it wasn’t for him maybe his parents would have gotten their happy ending, or at least his mother would have anyway.

“Stop it” Adam’s strict voice comes from the doorway but Ronan doesn’t open his eyes.

“Stop what? I’m just lying here” Ronan murmurs

“I know that face, stop blaming yourself for stuff that isn’t your fault, we’re here to get you to sleep.”

“Says the idiot who blames everything on himself all the fucking time.”

Adam doesn’t respond so Ronan is forced to open his eyes to check if Adam is actually mad at him but he’s not or well he doesn’t seem to be.

His back is facing the bed and he’s fiddling with Ronan’s old stereo on the shelves.

“What the fuck are you doing Parrish?”

“You listen to music to help you sleep. Well you used to. So we’re trying that.”

“You can’t sleep to music Parrish”

“I’ll sleep fine” Adam says, turning to face Ronan now with unwavering intent in his eyes, “I have been sleeping fine, well as fine as the rest of us but Lynch if you don’t at least get a few hours sleep then you’ll pass out and I…I can’t bear the thought of that happening when I’m at school or work so…can we just try this?”

The instinct to argue just for the sake of arguing rises in his chest but looking into Adam’s eyes, Ronan is hit with the knowledge of just how much Adam cares for his health and wellbeing. Gansey never pushed Ronan on overcoming his insomnia because he suffered from his own as well, Noah was fucking dead and never slept but he didn’t need it anyway and God only knows about Cheng’s sleeping habits. 

But Adam cares, Adam actually gives a shit, even after everything that happened Adam still crawls into bed with him each night and kisses him and holds him close, trusting him completely.

And now he’s doing all this ridiculous caring shit just so Ronan isn’t afraid of falling asleep.

Jesus Christ this boy was too fucking much sometimes, but it wasn’t necessarily in a bad way.

Ronan pushes back the covers and gets into bed while Adam slides some CD into the stereo and suddenly soft Irish folk music fills the room.

Adam turns back to Ronan with cautious eyes, “This alright?”

Ronan usually listens to music with his earphones in and the music blaring out his thoughts but this is a pretty good alternative so he nods and shuffles closer to the wall so Adam can join him.

Adam merely leans over, kisses him on the forehead and says “Just give me a minute to get ready for bed.”

Ronan wants to mutter bitterly about how he definitely can’t sleep if Adam isn’t beside him but that would come across as rather pathetic and ungrateful so he just huffs.

It takes less than five minutes for Adam to get changed, brush his teeth and come back to bed but it seems like an eternity to Ronan while he stares up at the cream ceiling and remembers when he first heard this song when he was about five and his parents danced to it in the kitchen while Matthew, barely a toddler clapped his hands and laughed in that weird slobbery way babies do and Declan rolled his eyes but smiled.

It had always been a favourite of his but one he didn’t play too often, worried he’d tarnish the memory or something like that. It’s one of those Irish love songs with about a million verses in it but Ronan secretly loves it anyway.

Adam slips into bed beside him and Ronan tries not to think too much about how Adam had been doing that every night since Cabeswater died and has shown no immense desire to return to his box room above St. Agnus, not that Ronan would want him to.

The room is dark even though Ronan doesn’t remember Adam turning off the lights or closing the curtains, he feels Adam pull him into his chest and Ronan can’t find it in him to protest or to fight his own drooping eyelids.

He doesn’t want to sleep, he doesn’t want to see what lies in his disturbing subconscious and most of all he’s not sure if he’s scared Cabeswater will be gone or that Cabeswater will still be there.

Adam takes his hand and intertwines their fingers and Ronan shivers when he feels Adam press a gentle kiss behind his ear.

“I’ll stay awake for a while okay? If you look like you’re having a nightmare I’ll wake you up, I promise.”

“You don’t have to”

“It’s fine” Adam says in a soft but clear voice that bears no arguments, Ronan’s not sure if he sounds more like Blue or Gansey at that moment but then those two were beginning to become the same person, “I’ve some reading to do for school anyway-“

The words ‘don’t move away until I fall asleep’ rise to Ronan’s lips but Adam again seems to know what he’s thinking as he only pulls Ronan closer to his chest,

“Sleep Ronan, please, I’ll be here all night. You need this.”

Ronan finds it hard to deny Adam’s voice anything but Adam’s voice with his Henrietta accent slipping through due to his tiredness is something that Ronan doesn’t actually want to fight.

So Ronan just nods, uses his free hand to pull the duvet up over their shoulders and lets his eyes drift closed.

It takes him an unknown amount of time to fall asleep but it’s not until he finally does that Ronan realises how much he fucking missed sleeping and partly the dreaming that comes along with it.

In his dream he opens his eyes to blinding sunlight and finds himself lying in a cloak of warm grass.

When he sits up, his body tenses as if preparing for attack but when he looks around he finds that he’s in one of the fields at the back of the Barns.

It’s one of the fields that he used to play in as a kid, Declan and he used to race each other here, he used to carry Matthew on his shoulders when they got older and they’d both end up falling to the ground laughing.

It’s not Cabeswater but it gives Ronan that same feeling of warmth, familiarity and security just like Cabeswater did.

His body acts without his brain’s orders and Ronan finds himself walking towards a large old oak tree that’s in the middle of the field for some fucking reason.

It’s only until he gets closer that he realises there are two people sitting underneath it and when he recognises them, Ronan’s breath catches in his throat.

Niall Lynch is leaning against the bark of a tree, beaming down at his wife Aurora whose head lies in his lap. They look like some romantic cliché couple you’d see from a photo from the sixties with Niall’s hair carefree, dark and down to just above his shoulders and Aurora with a daisy flower crown in her hair.

Ronan’s heart clenches painfully when he sees the undeniable love in their eyes when they look at each other; he’d forgotten how powerful that look was.

Without warning, Aurora stands up and starts walking towards Ronan. Everything inside him screams at him to run, to not deal with this right now, to wake the fuck up so he doesn’t end up breaking down and crying because Lynches don’t do that, Ronan doesn’t do that.

But when he sees his mother smile at him, Ronan finds himself frozen in place and frozen in time.

It takes her seconds to appear in front of him because dreams work like that and then a soft hand is caressing his cheek, both loving and protective, the way only a caring parent’s touch can be.

Ronan wants to apologise, to beg for her forgiveness, there are a thousand things he wants to say but no words come out.

He doesn’t realise tears are building until one falls down his cheek but his mum only smiles reassuringly at him, brushing it aside with her thumb.

“Thank you” she whispers

Ronan frowns and blinks back more tears and in one of those blinks he misses Aurora disappearing and then he stops, eyes wide and desperate for her to reappear but then he sees she never left she just went back to Niall.

And that’s when everything clicks.

She was thanking him for bringing them back together.

A thousand questions fly through Ronan’s head, is she thanking him for her death? Does that mean his mother holds him responsible for her own death? Does this mean it really is his fault? Do Declan and Matthew blame him too?

But then he hears her laugh, he wipes his eyes and sees her throwing her head back in her husband’s lap, his father is smiling, albeit a bit smugly so she’s likely laughing at a joke he made, or probably some old story he retold that has only a small bit of truth to it.

And Ronan finds himself smiling too as he watches them.

She’s happy, they’re happy and they’re finally together again; just as they were always meant to be.

A part of Ronan always knew she’d never be herself again after her husband died, no Cabeswater could fix that type of heartbreak and while he certainly wishes she were still alive, at least now he has the comfort in knowing that his parents are together again.

It may not be the fairy-tale happy ending Niall and Aurora Lynch deserved but they were happy, Ronan was sure they were happy so that’s good enough for him.

When Ronan wakes up, the sun is low but still shining through the closed curtains, after a few minutes pass and his body becomes his own again, he sits up and checks the time on the alarm clock beside his bed. It reads 17:40 and while it’s a dream thing and can never lie, it takes Ronan a few seconds to believe how long he slept for; he’s missed almost a full 24 hours. 

“Adam?” Ronan says but it comes out more of a hoarse croak so he doubts Adam heard him even if he is in the house.

Sliding out of bed, he throws on the pair of sweatpants he threw off yesterday and that Adam apparently picked up off the floor and folded neatly on the desk-chair, he goes to the bathroom and then makes his way downstairs.

The radio is playing in the kitchen and when Ronan reaches the doorway, he stops and smiles at the sight.

Opal is sitting on the counter, licking something off of the wooden cooking spoon as she sings terribly along to whatever pop song is playing.

Adam is not too far away at the stove, stirring something in a saucepan with another spoon and his hips sway slightly to the beat of the music.

His presence doesn’t stay secret for long though because soon enough Opal has spotted him and is screeching, “Kerah!” and jumping down off the counter and running towards him.

Ronan rolls his eyes fondly and picks her up while ruffling her hair, “Hey shitface”

Opal just sticks her tongue out at him and scrunches up her nose which almost has Ronan sniggering.

“Hey” Adam’s voice drags Ronan’s eyes away to Adam’s gentle ones, “I was going to wake you in a bit for dinner, you seemed okay so I hope you don’t mind that I let you sleep in for a bit. You look much better.”

Ronan lets Opal drop gently to the floor and acknowledges her leaving while taking that spoon with her but most of his attention is as always focused on Adam.

“Are you implying I looked bad Parrish?” Ronan asks, walking towards him with a raised eyebrow.

Adam merely grins, leaning against the cupboard and letting Ronan practically trap him against it,

“You’re right, you haven’t improved at all. You just always look like shit.”

Ronan rolls his eyes but leans down to kiss Adam anyway,

“You’re such a fucking ass Parrish.”

“You love my ass so shut up Lynch.”

Well Ronan couldn’t exactly deny that so instead he just does what he needs to and pulls Adam into a tight hug and buries his face into Adam’s neck, breathing in the scent of wood and pinecone and dirt and everything that makes up the human masterpiece that is Adam Parrish.

Adam wraps his around him in return and he rubs his back ever so slightly like Ronan has seen him do with Opal once or twice.

“You sleep alright?” Adam asks, his voice quiet as if he’s not sure whether he should ask such a question or not.

Ronan nods, “Yeah I did, I slept…great actually” he admits, pulling back to face Adam, brushing a strand of hair out of Adam’s eyes so he can see them clearly, “Thank you for…for everything you did last night.”

Adam shrugs as if it was nothing and while Ronan knows Adam truly thinks what he did was nothing to Ronan what he did means the world.

“So, no bad dreams?” Adam inquires as he turns back to the stir-fry that he’s cooking.

Ronan frowns as he tries to think of the right answer. His dream certainly wasn’t a nightmare but it wasn’t exactly good.

It wasn’t bad either in fairness…if anything it was just…comforting in a way that Ronan’s dreams never were.

“No” Ronan says smiling, “No bad dreams”

Ronan can hear the smile in Adam’s voice when he says, “That’s good.”

Deciding he’d rather move on from this conversation, Ronan fetches himself a cup of water before downing it quickly and jumping up on the counter where Opal had been sitting and asking,

“So how was school?”

For the next while he listens to Adam recount his classes and what homework he’s done and what he still has to do and Ronan nods along smiling and he’s already thinking of ways to distract Adam from doing that homework after dinner.

He wants to help Adam cook but knows this is Adam’s way of ‘repaying him’ for letting him stay over the past few days even though he surely knows having him here is everything Ronan ever wanted. So instead Ronan swings his legs and watches him cook, pulling Adam to him every now and again to steal a few kisses in between conversations of school and work and their friends.

There’s still a lot Ronan has to deal with.

Declan and Matthew will be coming down at the weekend to see if it’s safe for Matthew to come back for good and to arrange a funeral or some form of mass for their mother.

He still needs to figure out how to disconnect Matthew from his own life span so if he drops dead one of these days, Matthew won’t end up like their mother after Niall died.

Then there’s Gansey who’s currently adjusting to coming back from the dead for the second time and dating the girl of his dreams.

He’ll have to decide whether he should dream up a new Cabeswater, if that’s even possible for him anymore and if it would be worth it after everything they endured with the last one.

And of course the knowledge that Noah has been gone for the longest period of time since they’ve known him and that he’s likely never to return.

But right now as Adam puts the food he cooked onto three plates with a bright smile on his face before calling Opal in so they can all eat together, almost as if they were some type of family, Ronan lets all of those worrying thoughts drift to the back of his mind.

For now with a clear, well-rested head, he just wants to pretend to be somewhat normal by having dinner with his maybe-boyfriend and his crazy dream creature child who enjoys biting into the fork rather than the food that’s on it.

Who needs a fairy-tale happy ending anyway when you’ve got a pretty nerd who’ll care for you and cook for you and a demon child to keep you company?

Adam catches his eye as they sit down at the table and he doesn’t smile but his eyes hold that bright reassuring look of his that lets Ronan know that things will be alright.

And for the first time since the day that shit went down and Cabeswater died Ronan actually believes that and he smiles.


End file.
